RYAN BA­CHOO

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Some of the biggest names in Caribbean and geopol­i­tics have be­gun ar­riv­ing in T&T for the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty’s (Cari­com) Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing that takes place at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain from Mon­day through to Wednes­day.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res ar­rived af­ter lunch yes­ter­day. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands he was tak­en to the Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre be­fore be­ing treat­ed at Mara­cas Bay to some lo­cal cui­sine.

Among the oth­er dig­ni­taries to ar­rive at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day were As­sis­tant Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs of Chi­na Hua Chun­y­ing, An­tigua Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Baroness Pa­tri­cia Scot­land, and St Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Philip J Pierre.

Antony Blinken, the Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, is due to ar­rive in T&T in the com­ing days while the Pres­i­dent of Guyana will ar­rive on Mon­day ahead of the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny sched­uled for 4.30pm.

While it is the 45th meet­ing of the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment, it’s the 50th an­niver­sary of the sign­ing of The Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas which gave birth to the re­gion­al body. It was signed on Ju­ly 4, 1973.

Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, who ar­rived in T&T on Sun­day, is the in­com­ing chair­man of Cari­com.

Speak­ing with the me­dia up­on ar­rival, Sker­rit says the meet­ing presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on how far the Caribbean has come but al­so deal with the most press­ing is­sues fac­ing the re­gion at this time.

Sker­rit said, “It’s a time for in­tro­spec­tion and re­flec­tion af­ter 50 years of Cari­com. I think it’s im­por­tant for us to as­sess where we are at 50 years and where we would like to be 50 years down the road. It’s be­ing held in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the birth­place of Cari­com and what bet­ter place to have that in­tro­spec­tion and re­flec­tion. We have a num­ber of crit­i­cal mat­ters to dis­cuss on the agen­da. We have some very im­por­tant guests—the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, the Pres­i­dent of Rwan­da and sev­er­al coun­tries that are rep­re­sent­ed—so I’m very ex­cit­ed about the next few days and I think we will have some very frank en­gage­ments.”

On the back of the Cari­com Re­gion­al Crime Sym­po­sium held at the same venue on April 17 to 18, Sker­rit says se­cu­ri­ty is one of the main chal­lenges that need to be met in the re­gion.

He added that is­sues such as health, trade, food se­cu­ri­ty when it comes to mar­itime and air trans­porta­tion are crit­i­cal.

“The oth­er thing at 50 I re­al­ly think we should be look­ing at is com­plet­ing the lease of free move­ment. We can­not have an in­te­gra­tion process and peo­ple can’t move freely, and it can­not be a class sys­tem. I think we need to look at an in­te­gra­tion move­ment and every­body needs to be part of this in­te­gra­tion move­ment.”

Sker­rit said Cari­com was a friend of all and the rest of the world recog­nised the re­gion­al body as a bloc.

“Once Cari­com is unit­ed, we can bring the at­ten­tion that is re­quired to the re­gion and ne­go­ti­ate a bet­ter deal,” the Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter said.

The UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al will de­liv­er re­marks at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on Mon­day af­ter­noon in ad­di­tion to host­ing a press con­fer­ence with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley this morn­ing 10.30 am.

Guter­res is ex­pect­ed to un­der­score that the world needs to match the lead­er­ship, en­er­gy and com­mit­ment of the Caribbean coun­tries in is­sues such as the re­struc­tur­ing of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem and the cli­mate cri­sis in his speech.

He is al­so ex­pect­ed to re­it­er­ate the Unit­ed Na­tion’s com­mit­ment to call for more am­bi­tious ac­tion on these two ar­eas be­fore trav­el­ling back to New York on Tues­day.

The Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Baroness Scot­land, will al­so de­liv­er re­marks. In the build-up to the meet­ing, Scot­land com­mend­ed the achieve­ments of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, stat­ing, “Cari­com came to­geth­er 50 years ago to en­hance the con­nec­tions, well-be­ing, pros­per­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of Caribbean coun­tries and their cit­i­zens. Those ob­jec­tives were pre­scient then, and now, half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, they are more im­por­tant than ever.”

In T&T, the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al will en­gage with Caribbean lead­ers, seek­ing their per­spec­tives and col­lab­o­rat­ing on strate­gies to pro­vide more tai­lored and prac­ti­cal as­sis­tance to the re­gion. She will al­so up­date lead­ers on prepa­ra­tions for the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) sched­uled to take place in Samoa from Oc­to­ber 21, 2024.

While the meet­ing will open with a cer­e­mo­ny at 4:30pm, the of­fi­cial flag rais­ing cer­e­mo­ny to mark 50 years will take place on Tues­day, in Ch­aguara­mas, fol­lowed by trib­utes at the Hy­att. There will al­so be a 50th an­niver­sary con­cert on Tues­day from 7 pm be­fore with busi­ness ses­sions on both Tues­day and Wednes­day. The meet­ing wraps up with a me­dia con­fer­ence at 6:45pm on Wednes­day.